The Collected Fiction of Kenneth Koch
by Kenneth Koch
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"It's lucky for us all that you're holding Koch's collected fiction in your hands right now. Koch's seasons on our earth were blessed ones and these traces, some of them among his last, are gifts."--Jonathan Lethem Hilarious and profoundly moving, this volume restores to print all the fiction of the writer John Ashbery called "simply the best we have." Koch, who once characterized New York School writing as about "the fullness and richness of possibility and excitement and happiness," imbues show more his prose with humor, wit, and a beautifully tender exuberance.The Collected Fiction of Kenneth Koch is a must-read for anyone interested in discovering what American literature might still hope to be. Published simultaneously withThe Collected Poems of Kenneth Koch (Knopf),Collected Fiction includes Koch's innocent and rambunctious novelThe Red Robins, as well asHotel Lambosa, his book of semi-autobiographical short pieces inspired equally by Hemingway's Nick Adams stories and Yasunari Kawabata'sPalm-of-the-Hand Stories. Fans of Koch's unparalleled gift for comic invention will turn immediately to "The New Orleans Stories," a cycle about the family of a small-time criminal, published here for the first time along with "The Soviet Room," a gentle story of requited love at the end of the Cold War. Koch's previously uncollected work includes a warm-hearted parody of a children's adventure narrative and a story detailing the mysteries uncovered by an obsessive postcarddetective. Together, the work of Kenneth Koch opens up a wonderful world--one where the pursuit of happiness is taken very seriously indeed. Kenneth Koch was born in Cincinnati and served in the South Pacific during World War II. A poet, playwright, novelist, and Columbia University professor, Koch also published several books about teaching and reading poetry, including the groundbreakingWishes, Lies, and Dreams;Rose, Where Did You Get That Red?; andMaking Your Own Days: The Pleasures of Reading and Writing Poetry. He was the recipient of the Bollingen Prize and the Bobbitt Library of Congress Prize, a finalist for the National Book Award, and winner of the Phi Beta Kappa Poetry Award. show lessTags
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Village Voice
The Collected Fiction of Kenneth Koch
Edited by Jordan Davis, Karen Koch, and Ron Padgett
Coffee House Press, 387 pp., $18
Koch's fiction strings together impeccable sentences in ways that beat the boundaries of logic and genre. A seven-page Hardy Boys epic nestles next to a Proustian riff off a postcard; novels have a hard time deciding whether they're made up of chapters or stories. Koch wrote about one long work: "All the sentences were like the last sentences of novels or the first sentences of short stories." There's an innocence to all his orderings, and a great relief in not knowing whether we're reading grown-up literature for children ("He really loved the polenta, and so did his friend") or children's literature for show more grown-ups ("We have had such a good lunch that it makes me sad"). What's certain is a light and loving hand that wasn't afraid to do a little wavering. show less
The Collected Fiction of Kenneth Koch
Edited by Jordan Davis, Karen Koch, and Ron Padgett
Coffee House Press, 387 pp., $18
Koch's fiction strings together impeccable sentences in ways that beat the boundaries of logic and genre. A seven-page Hardy Boys epic nestles next to a Proustian riff off a postcard; novels have a hard time deciding whether they're made up of chapters or stories. Koch wrote about one long work: "All the sentences were like the last sentences of novels or the first sentences of short stories." There's an innocence to all his orderings, and a great relief in not knowing whether we're reading grown-up literature for children ("He really loved the polenta, and so did his friend") or children's literature for show more grown-ups ("We have had such a good lunch that it makes me sad"). What's certain is a light and loving hand that wasn't afraid to do a little wavering. show less
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56+ Works 2,632 Members
Kenneth Koch was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and was educated at Harvard and Columbia Universities. Koch has been a faculty member at Columbia since 1959 and is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Koch has written works of fiction, poetry, essays and plays as well as Wishes, Lies show more and Dreams and Rose, Where Did You Get That Red, which are books on teaching poetry. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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